When they headed toward the front door, four medium-sized boxes were stacked there. It was definitely an amount difficult for one person to move alone. They were brown cardboard boxes commonly seen at the post office, but there was no logo drawn on the exterior.
A bright red sticker was attached over the transparent tape on top. Inside it, the phrase ‘Unauthorized Opening Prohibited’ was written in black letters. He could understand why the housekeeper had hesitated.
“Huh? Can you carry them? I can move them all.”
“It’s okay.”
Seonwoo picked up the two boxes on top. Since his right hand was hard to put strength into, he hugged them with his left hand and supported the bottom with his right arm. The rest was Junyeong’s share.
“Huh? They’re from the police station……”
It was when they turned the corner of the stairs and came up to the second floor. A faint muttering was heard from behind. At those words, Seonwoo also looked down at the boxes. The recipient was definitely Seonwoo. But the sender information written in the upper left was the police station.
It was definitely a police station Seonwoo didn’t remember. The detective’s name that followed was the same. Even reading it again, nothing came to mind.
All four boxes were quite heavy. After setting them down in a row on the floor, Seonwoo began opening them at random. He tore off the tape along with the sticker that had the warning ‘Unauthorized Opening Prohibited’ written on it and opened the box.
“……”
The moment he checked the contents, Seonwoo paused his hands for a moment. With his gaze fixed as it was, he spoke to Junyeong, who would be behind him.
“We finished everything we needed to talk about, right?”
“Huh? Well, yeah.”
“Then let’s end it here for today.”
“Oh, um…… Should we?”
Junyeong, who trailed off his words faintly, gathered the textbooks and writing implements from the desk into his bag. Even pretending otherwise, he couldn’t hide his joy at the saved time.
“I’ll prepare the problem sets myself, so you don’t need to worry about it. Then see you this weekend!”
He greeted cheerfully even as he left the room, but Seonwoo didn’t respond. Leaving the box he’d just opened as it was, he began tearing off the tape from the other boxes.
It was when he opened the third box like that. A yellow Post-it note was placed on top of the neatly organized items.
「As requested, we are returning the deceased’s belongings
Please contact us if there are any issues
We offer our sincere condolences for the deceased ― Detective Kang Mingi」
Seonwoo put down the Post-it for a moment and finished opening the remaining boxes. The contents were the same. All four boxes were filled with Dad’s belongings.
A pocket-sized notebook with a rubber band, a pencil case containing drawing pens and water-based pens of various colors, a drawing book with tattered corners from fingerprints…… They were all things familiar to Seonwoo’s eyes.
Seonwoo didn’t take out or touch those items, just gazed at them quietly. Then he picked up the Post-it note he’d left in place again and read aloud the first words written on it.
“As requested……”
ლ
The Criminal Investigation Division of XX Police Station was on the second floor of the police station building. Going up the stairs, you could immediately see the office entrance along with a sign. The office was as spacious as a large auditorium.
With no divisions by walls and a structure where you could see the entire office at a glance, it had considerable openness. Centered on the analog clock hanging on the central wall, the left side had Team 1’s desks and the right side had Team 2’s.
The hour hand inside the round clock was pointing at 5 o’clock. A detective wearing a khaki blouson jacket chewed on a paper cup. It was an empty cup with only coffee grounds left, but he found it bothersome to go to the vending machine at the end of the hallway.
A case that the entire team had been working on for a while had been concluded, and now was a time for recharging. There was nothing urgent to handle right away, so all he’d done today was eat a hearty lunch.
Overdue reports were piled in one corner of his desk, but they’d long been treated as interior decoration. He planned to spend the remaining time—less than an hour until leaving work—leisurely like this.
“Mingi sunbae, someone’s looking for you outside.”
But life doesn’t go as planned. The detective gave his innocent junior a pointless side glance before getting up from his seat.
The moment he saw the young man standing blankly in the hallway, he sighed inwardly. Whatever it was, his first thought was that it would be troublesome. It was the intuition of a detective who’d rolled around in this field for a long time.
“You were looking for me……”
It was when he approached and was about to strike up a conversation. The moment he met eyes visible above the white mask, he tilted his head.
“Oh, aren’t you the student I saw at the hospital that time?”
Seonwoo silently bowed his head in greeting. The detective also responded roughly while checking his wristwatch. Twenty minutes until leaving work. He set a goal to finish within that time.
Before asking about the circumstances, the detective first guided him to the end of the hallway where the vending machine was. Since he was moving anyway, he planned to drink coffee. One cup while commuting, one cup to cleanse his palate after lunch, one cup because his mouth was bored, and including the current one, this would be his fourth.
“There’s also hot chocolate, do you want some?”
Seonwoo just shook his head. The detective slurped the coffee full of hot steam without hesitation.
“Did the package I sent the day before yesterday or yesterday arrive safely?”
“Yes.”
“Was there some kind of problem? I was surprised you came to see me without any contact.”
“I didn’t know your number, detective-nim.”
“The police station name is written on that box. You could have searched it on the internet and called that number. Anyway, so what did you come here for?”
“That package. I never requested it.”
At that, the detective took his mouth off the paper cup. More than half the coffee had already disappeared.
“Right. Because someone else did it for you instead of you. The business card should be somewhere……”
“The Vice Director of Taewoong Hospital?”
“Oh, you’re accurate. That’s right.”
“That person……”
“Student, wait a moment. Let’s sit down and talk. My knees hurt from standing.”
The detective pointed to the chair next to the vending machine with the hand holding the paper cup. The detective took the end seat first and Seonwoo sat one seat away from him.
“Still, you’ve recovered a lot. Back then you looked extremely serious. Is your hand better?”
“No.”
At the firm answer, the detective smacked his lips awkwardly.
“Well…… It’ll gradually get better, won’t it? Anyway, the reason you came today is because you’re curious about how the belongings were returned without your consent, something like that, right?”
“Yes.”
“It’s generally standard for the bereaved family to apply directly, but depending on the circumstances, we do it with appropriate flexibility. But during the reference investigation, I did ask you first.”
“When?”
“That, why. When I visited the hospital while you were hospitalized. To ask various things related to your mother’s case. I explained that your father’s possessions weren’t subject to seizure and could be returned once the investigation was complete. But you don’t remember, right?”
“Yes.”
He only recalled the fact that the detective came right after he regained consciousness. He didn’t remember exactly what they talked about. At that time, he was in shock from consecutive blows, so he didn’t remember most of what happened except for the news of the accident.
“That doctor said so too. That your head was severely injured so there was no point talking to you then. So we had a bit of trouble during the investigation too. There was no one around to ask things.”
“Aren’t you asking me more now?”
“It’s already out of our hands, what would I ask? The prosecutors and judges will take care of the rest. Anyway, we were keeping your father’s belongings, and last week or so? They asked us to send them because you were discharged.”
The detective crumpled up the finished paper cup and threw it. The paper cup that flew in a parabola landed exactly in the round trash can.
“You can’t just apply if you’re a complete stranger—you have to be a guardian or representative or something like that, you know? Anyway, it’s complicated so you have to submit documents here and there and get permission. Then a fancy lawyer all dressed up in a suit came from that side and handled everything.”
